Advancing standard processes with new technology

The use of technology and defined collaborative processes brings about greater collaboration between project teams, which in turn leads to better project deliverables through improved quality and accuracy and flow of information and data.

Before you retool or reengineer processes, you need to establish benchmarks against which you can evaluate tangible items such as cost, time, and carbon, while being careful not to create new layers of key performance indicators. You can measure the things BIM can generate, but make sure that you also consider measuring the things that BIM stops happening, such as clashed reduction when requesting information.

Understand that you rarely achieve savings from BIM in isolation, but rather when BIM is part of a much wider program. As you discover in Chapter 9, BIM is one part of the pie that also includes slices of new methods of procurement and soft landings. Figure 15-1 describes a best-practice, collaborative workflow for a BIM supply chain.

A lot of acronyms are involved and we explain them in more detail in Chapter 8, but here’s a quick overview. You start the process with an assessment of the overall need and the client records his digital information requirements, which form part of the contract documents. The supply chain responds via BIM execution plans (BEP) to demonstrate their capability to deliver the client’s requests. Within the BEP, the project teams develop individual task information delivery plans (TIDP) that the main contractor uses to manage the master information delivery plan (MIDP). The benefit of the common data environment (CDE) is to provide a single location for the domain federated models and project data.

Don’t rush out and buy software and hardware first. Your doctor wouldn’t prescribe you medicine without first diagnosing what was wrong with you. Many different vendors and products are available on the market. Some are on a pay-per-seat license, and some have a concurrent or network license. Some software is subscription based and other software may be free. As you discover in Chapter 7, you need to consider a number of things before making any purchase or investment.

After you establish your benchmarks, start reworking processes to become lean. Next look to remove any bottlenecks. Don’t think only in technology terms, though, or software and hardware that may be holding you back. Also consider people and work on any barriers that may exist, such as training needs, fear, or resistance to change. After you do all this, then you can begin to marry digital tools in order to implement BIM.

Make sure you understand your client’s requirements. Through the use of plain language questions (PLQs) the client is able to both set out and identify the minimum information to exchange at any given stage in order to answer the client’s queries.

Ask yourself: how can BIM help automate some of your existing processes? If you manage data in a consistent way during the design process then you can pass data on for manufacture and assembly (DFMA), which is all about designing products while keeping the manufacturing and assembly process in mind. Through a DFMA process, you can make further savings.

Often, the reported benefits of BIM are directed toward the industry as a whole or individuals rather than organizations. The issue around how long your return on investment will take is an important consideration. You need to set aside adequate time for meeting training needs, reengineering processes, and adapting to new ways of working. Refer to case studies and talk to other similar organizations. In Chapter 22 we discuss a number of online communities in which people are always willing to share experiences and advice.

Processes should be outcome based. Therefore, consider goal-directed planning.

Reporting on the right metrics

In the UK, the Government Construction Strategy has been clear in its 15 to 20 percent target for costs savings, where these cost savings are from the construction budget and not post-occupancy costs. The benefits to industry have been presented by performance improvement, greater project certainty, and a reduction in risk, which are all factors that an integrated supply chain can quantify and understand.

To achieve the benefits outlined by the UK government and make intelligent and best use of information, you require a good flow of accurate information throughout the project teams. The big value proposition for BIM is in the operation and maintenance phases of a project. This information can be used to achieve optimized performance, running costs, and energy and carbon reductions. BIM brings great benefits to the design process, where the client can quickly test and accept or dismiss different opportunities and configurations to achieve optimal deliverables in terms of cost, quality, and time.

In the early days, the benefits of BIM were based on a leap of faith. Since then the construction industry has assessed the benefits across the world, through trial projects, cases studies, and research.

The UK Department of Trade and Industry set up Avanti projects (http://constructingexcellence.org.uk/resources/avanti) in 2002 to promote ICT-enabled collaborative working. Rather than a particular project, Avanti is an approach based on getting people to work together, providing processes to enable collaboration and applying tools to support collaborative working. A number of case studies demonstrate significant savings achieved by using BIM techniques.

BIM isn’t a silver bullet to solve every potential cost issue on a project. However, it does go a long way in improving collaborations and the quality of information, which in turn makes for better informed decisions, project deliverables, and predictability. Through the use of frameworks, protocols, and standards, you can rectify many potentially costly mistakes at an early stage before construction commences and before a spade hits the ground. At this point, any design changes are relatively low cost because you’re only moving around components within a digital model, as opposed to physical walls in the built asset (see Chapter 8 for more information).

BIM can give you more than cost certainty and savings, though. You can begin to build smarter and faster and be kinder to the environment. You can use project information throughout the whole timeline, through into the occupancy and maintenance stages, where you achieve further cost and carbon savings.

As we discuss in Chapter 17, BIM can be effective in making safer assets, not just during construction but also in occupation. BIM brings about a number of commercial advantages, but the potential benefits of improved safety by reducing accidents and fatalities are so high that they’re almost unquantifiable.

Measuring the immediate impact

Although you reap many benefits in the longer term, plenty of benefits make an immediate impact, including

• More for less: BIM provides better value for money. Another way to look at cost savings is to think of the outputs rather than individual examples. Instead of showing that BIM can save you, say, 20 percent on a project, demonstrate that you can produce five buildings for the price of four.
• Right first time: Because you and the project team are all using and sharing the same base information, there are more opportunities to use up-to-date information, meaning that you get it right first time.
• Build better before built: Building digitally first before committing to the actual building of the physical asset means that you can test and analyze the data first, resulting in an optimized design before construction begins.
• More innovative solutions: Through BIM you can explore many different opportunities in a relatively short space of time and test the outcome and performance of these options, resulting in innovative solutions.
• Better collaboration: The BIM process brings the project team together through common standards, better communication, and the use of a common data environment, all of which contribute to better collaboration.
• Retention and attraction of the best staff: Adopting lean processes and procedures puts you and your organization at the vanguard in new developments and ideas. What member of staff wouldn’t want to be part of that?

Expecting savings based on the logic of BIM

BIM achieves the real savings through coordinated information, reducing the need for rework, increasing efficiency, and improving information accuracy by working from the same base information. If you’re a client buying your data for the first time, remember that the cost savings occur throughout the whole project timeline:

• Soft landings: They seek to reduce the hidden costs of adapting completed spaces to suit specific end-user needs.
• Increased use of standardization: It generates efficiency and procurement savings such as through the use of offsite manufacturing.
• Better team collaboration: Contractors, suppliers, and consultants work harder to beat benchmark targets, leading to better competitiveness, which also leads to less risk, lower insurance premiums, and a reduction in potential claims.
• Visualizations and 3D models: They allow the clients, project teams, and stakeholders to understand the design intent, explore design options, optimize deliverables, and reduce client variations.
• Standard documentation: Employer’s information requirement (EIRS), BIM execution plans (BEPS), standards, and protocols allow the project team to coordinate and share information and documentation in a timely and consistent manner. They agree what standards the project team will use and what the deliverables are.
• Single source of truth: Working within a common data environment (CDE) allows all project members to work on the same base information, reducing the need for rework. The BIM process can detect clashes and conflicts early and resolve them, leading to a reduction in waste and delays.

The potential benefits of BIM are only going to increase as processes, technology, and adoption improve. Level 2 BIM has limited functionality for delivery of operational data sets and integration of telemetry. However, as you move into the future, Level 3 will address these elements in sector delivery and operational stages, with a focus on enabling total cost, which is the amount of money spent by an organization to produce a given output and carbon outputs. Operational data will help unlock savings in asset performance.

Evaluating BIM for all construction disciplines

BIM isn’t just about the building or asset envelope but also how that asset connects to the landscape. Infrastructure plays a vital part of construction, yet in many instances you may not see those projects because they’re buried deep beneath the surface. Infrastructure projects such as tunnels, railways, and roads are often of utmost national importance and are important to a country’s economy.

As Chapter 2 explains, the term Building Information Modeling is a bit misleading, because BIM is a verb. Instead of thinking about building as a structure with a roof and walls or an envelope, think about the term building as in the action of constructing or building something. BIM isn’t just about design. It covers the whole project timeline, including post practical completion and project management.

Putting BIM into practice during the operation phases

The operation phase of an asset usually commences as soon as the owner occupier takes possession at the handover stage after the project completes. This is the phase when the client or end user starts to use the built product (or service). Asset and facilities management considers optimizing whole-life costs. This could be over a portfolio of assets, all of which may be completely different to each other and even miles apart.

The digital information collated during the design and construction is vital in understanding the asset’s future operational and maintenance requirements. It allows the client to make better informed decisions and conduct better scenario planning on operation and maintenance costs because it’s based on actual statistics and facts on the asset’s performance and status. There is also an increased amount of verification of information because information is based upon quality information. The client can also make better organizational and strategic planning decisions because asset information is more accurate and complete, and the client can more easily generate legislative documents such as health and safety files or operational and maintenance manuals.

The BIM process can also reduce costs by transferring accurate, consistent, clear, and complete information, at handover stage or when transferring operations from one service provider to another service provider.

BIM can greatly improve the handover process for clients by delivering information that’s both structured and consistent, such as the specified information set COBie. This approach to information delivery removes any complexity from process, technology change, and competition issues within the supply chain. (Refer to Chapter 11 for more information about COBie.)